


count your teardrops, all hundred-fourteen of them

by lunarblazes



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Demon Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Made Up Demon Lore, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Time Travelling Karl Jacobs, and bad mentioned that thing about demons needing human lives, and uh. angst!, i headcanon sapnap as a demon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29989950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarblazes/pseuds/lunarblazes
Summary: Sapnap doesn’t want to leave his life behind, but he’s dependent on living by a thread— a thread named Dream. After the events in the bunker, he finds himself stuck in a whirlwind of demonic spirit, a maze made of endless flames. Can he get himself out of this mess?Turns out the answer is no. But maybe with a little help he can try.//TW FOR SLIGHT BODY HORROR!! there is a demon transformation in this that’s really central and some slightly graphic imagery!!!//
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Karl Jacobs & Sapnap, Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs/Sapnap, gay morons? also good shit, it’s smp canon anyway go apeshit, or - Relationship, platonic fiances? good shit, take your pick with romantic or platonic karlnapity here
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	count your teardrops, all hundred-fourteen of them

**Author's Note:**

> title from today, today by jack stauber
> 
> ________
> 
> today, today, is one of those days  
> stuck between yesterday and tomorrow   
> everywhere to go, everything to do  
> seems like the fair light burned out

Sapnap is sure that he doesn’t need to worry, even when Dream is at the mercy of Tommy’s axe. Even when Dream falls to the blade, twice, nearly again. He’s not sure why. Numbly, he thinks it might be denial. 

Demons can’t live in the overworld. They’re castouts, floating remnants— Sapnap is lucky that he managed to find Bad in the Nether fortress they were both stuck in. Demons need humans to help them live, to keep them real. Otherwise they simply return to their element. Sapnap doesn’t quite remember what it means to be reduced to pure heat and light and slow, viscous movements; he’s been stuck in a human skin for so long now. Dream made a promise, that he wouldn’t die, so that Sapnap would be safe and they’d stay together in the world forever.

Tommy raises his axe (or, rather,  _ Dream’s  _ axe, wrenched from his grasp as Sapnap leveled his blade at his best friend’s head) as Tubbo clutches Puffy’s sleeve, hand gripped tightly on his sword hilt. Sapnap thinks vaguely that he should tell Tommy to stop, but he can’t trust himself to speak right now. And after all Dream’s done to Tommy, to all of them… does he have a right to deny the teenager of that freedom? He won’t die with the final fall of the blade. He’ll just vanish for a while. A decade, maybe. Bad can fish him out, eventually, if he isn’t persuaded by the egg to leave Sapnap to rot in the strange form of energy his demonic power requires. He’ll miss his friends. Maybe they’ll still be around when he gets back.

The blade doesn’t fall. Tommy shows mercy as Dream spills his secrets of life and death, and Sam suggests taking Dream to the prison. Sam grabs Dream roughly by the arm as Tommy and Tubbo celebrate. Sapnap hasn’t seen them look so happy in a long, long time. It’s nice. 

He feels it first build in his hands. His hands have always been warm, scorching, ready to spark off at any moment. Bad had said he used to keep a water bucket clipped to his belt at all times when they first came to the overworld, for fear of Sapnap accidentally burning down their house. Fires would roar with his temper, even when human; soul flames would rise to a searing blue tempest when Sapnap was harmed around them. Lava would flow uphill if Sapnap needed it to. Heat was always at the tip of his fingers.

Sapnap feels it building, and he’s scared. He waits until everyone’s gone through the portal, still staring at Beckerson and Mars’ places on the wall. He kind of wants to cry, weirdly— it just feels like something’s shattered, something’s fallen and broken into shards so small nobody could fuse them together again. George is off into the woods, trying to heal himself still (Sapnap said he’d protect him while he slept, he said that, he’d  _ promised) _ ; Dream’s blood stains the walls (they’d promised not to die, they’d helped each other for  _ years and years) _ ; Karl’s vanished again, off doing whatever he does when he stays in his library for days on end (last time Sapnap could have sworn Karl was outside his library when he disappeared, but Sapnap can’t believe that he’s been lost forever, not yet,  _ not now) _ ; Bad’s enamored with the egg, completely lost and bleached the same color as marrow in a jagged wound (his oldest caretaker, Sapnap will regret forever that he could have stopped this if he just  _ tried harder) _ ; Quackity… Quackity is standing still, concerned, by the portal, watching him (Sapnap doesn’t know what to do with Quackity, there is nothing to fight for him or protect against, his problems are in his mind, scars and broken bottles and bound wings, but he  _ can’t lose anyone else) _ . 

“Sapnap?” Quackity calls, voice soft. “You good?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sapnap responds. He tries to smooth his voice out into a convincing ruse. “Just… just need a second.”

He tilts his head towards the fish tanks hung on the wall. Quackity bows his head and steps through the portal, though he glances back as the magic transports him through the glassy film. Sapnap appreciates it, but he needs his fiancé to leave.

As soon as Quackity is gone, the storm hits. 

When a demon’s bond loses some of their lives, the demon becomes unable to hold their human form for long. Cracks show in the disguise, light and energy pour out from under the human facade. Their connection to the overworld fades. Sapnap had never told a soul he was a demon; Bad and Dream and Skeppy were the only three who really knew about him. The others probably suspect he isn’t human, but half the people on the server aren’t simply players, that’s nothing new. Most people know Bad is a demon because he chooses to reveal his form more often, rising to his full height just for kicks. Sapnap hates his form. He’d never want to go back to it, if he could help it, which is why he asked Dream to be his bond. Dream had been around since the beginning of the server. He wouldn’t die, they were both sure of it, so young and full of confidence and blistering hope.

Now here he is. Sprawled across the floor of a dark, terrifying bunker, Dream’s blood shining a deep crimson on the walls as Sapnap  _ breaks. _

The warmth used to be comforting. It used to feel like a welcome home, a  _ hello _ , a  _ goodbye _ , a  _ how have you been,  _ used to feel like asking about how the stars looked outside of the ones burning inside his soul. Now, as it spreads, his human skin can’t take it. It’s stretching and shifting, cracking apart at the seams like a cheaply-made bag. He can see the light pouring out from under his skin, where real, human blood would have been. It illuminates the horror show of shattered promises on the wall before his wide eyes. The warmth is terrifying.

Sapnap feels something snap into place, settling back into his soul. He hadn’t realized something was missing, but now that it’s back, all he can think is that he wants it gone again. He doesn’t know how he used to live like this— everything  _ hurts—  _ sharp claws are sprouting from his hands, flowing like lava from an open wound inflicted by a molten blade. Horns force their way through his skull; all his bones are melting, his blood is boiling away into nothing through the sweltering cracks that drift farther away in his skin. He can feel his teeth (the ones he always hated, the ones that made him look murderous and scary and poked his skin raw with their razor-sharp edges prodding at his lips) lengthen and twist his lips into a snarl. All he can think is that he’s so,  _ so  _ fucking grateful nobody else is around. 

Everything is melting around him into a pool of color and light, and he’s not sure if it’s because of his lava spilling out or because of the pressure pushing out behind his eyes. The pressure builds, spilling over into tears, which immediately evaporate on contact with the supercharged air around him. Sapnap can’t stop crying. It’s like something’s forcing him to dispel all the moisture in his body, all the water (humans are 70% water, he remembers Bad saying to him once) vanished into the heat of the maelstrom in the room. When he breathes in air, it combusts in his lungs; he can feel blisters forming as his still-too-human form struggles to keep up with his demonic essence. He exhales and the exhaust ignites into burning-bright flames, shades of mirage in orange, yellow, and red swirling through his vision.

“Oh,” he hears someone say. Sapnap can’t move to see who, but it doesn’t matter. He already knows who it is. “Oh my god.”

Quackity tries to run forward. Sapnap can barely hear his footsteps as his head roars in the tones of solar flares bubbling. He manages to squeak out a dry, cracked, rumbling warning: “Don’t. Stay back.”

“I— oh my  _ god,”  _ Quackity says again, horror dripping from his words. “ _ Oh my god, Sapnap—  _ what is this? What happened? I— you didn’t come with us into the Nether even after a while and I got worried because usually you like setting the warped trees on fire with Nether lava— and so I came back, because— because… Karl…” He trails off. Sapnap knows what he means. Karl had asked to be left alone only to be discovered broken and bleeding and drifting later too many times. “You… you too?”

Sapnap wants to cry. Really cry. With water dripping down his face, with a body made of the same flesh and blood as his fiancés, with the same eyes and no claws and no terrifying teeth bared constantly in an angry display. He’s staring down the last two offerings of a broken friendship while his fiancé begs him not to leave like their third partner did, set himself adrift in some sort of nebulous danger that they can’t even hope to understand or assist with. He doesn’t want to leave. He wants to process the situation like a  _ human.  _ He doesn’t want to drift in the Nether as an eternally burning nova, destined to float in rage and endless energy forever. 

He forces the lava in his throat back down, swallows hard. Unsurprisingly, it’s like swallowing the untamed ashes of a bonfire with the texture of an incredibly gooey marshmallow. “No. Not me. I won’t… I’ll fix this.”

“That’s what he said, too,” Quackity responds, and Sapnap doesn’t need to turn and see his face to know he’s terrified. “Will you really? Can— can I help, please— please let me help. Please. You can’t— you can’t leave, you— no. Let me help you.”

“You can’t,” Sapnap rasps, finally managing to turn around in place and face Quackity. He tries not to feel too bad when his fiancé flinches back, terror flashing across his face; he knows he looks monstrous right now, with the light and the ash and the fractures and the teeth and the horns, the red eyes searing a hole in the obsidian walls with their gaze. Sapnap squeezes his eyes shut, exhales a lick of flame. “You can’t help, but I promise, I  _ promise _ this will pass. I won’t… won’t drift. It’s natural.”

He can’t feel his tongue through the crackling heat, nor can he feel his throat blister, but Sapnap is pretty sure he should be done talking for now. He leans his head against the wall, just under the tanks, and sits there, trying to ignore the claws still straining against his fingertips and the second pair of horns haloing his forehead. The splitting headache he’ll have later will never be topped by anything, he’s sure of it. He hunches his shoulders in, trying to conceal the crackling lava bubbling up from where his muscle should be, but since his shirt has been reduced to ash and the cracks cover every inch of his skin, they’re still incredibly visible to Quackity as he slides as close as he can to Sapnap and sits against the wall. Sapnap thanks whatever deity may exist out in the world that he owns extremely fireproof coveralls that won’t even flinch at the direct heat of a volcano. 

“I miss him,” Sapnap mutters, his voice grating in his throat as he forces the words out and chokes on sticky magma rising from inside his chest. “I really do.”

Quackity reaches over and grabs Sapnap’s shoulder. Sapnap’s head snaps up, concerned— direct contact with  _ fucking lava  _ is not usually good for players like Quackity, especially with how flammable his feathers are— and sees that Quackity’s eyes are watering with pain, but still he holds the touch for a moment longer before pulling away quickly. “I do too, man. He’ll come back, eventually, though. We’ll just wait until that happens. We can wait a little more, right? We’re patient, yeah?”

Sapnap isn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry at that. They’re the least patient assholes on the entire server. He settles for leaning his head back down to rest in the crook of his knees. The transformation seems to have slowed for now, the obsidian’s cold presence beneath his bare feet finally reaching his skin. Exhaled air still sparks, molten rock still drips from his lips like rain from a leaf, but at least the claws have stopped pressing on. He feels dizzy, like he’s been spun around eight times and then put into a familiar room where everything is shifted an inch to the right. But Quackity is with him, and he at least doesn’t have to hide anything anymore from his friends (he has a feeling he’ll be explaining a lot once his throat is better), and he’s feeling… hopeful. Maybe next time they’ll be able to help Karl. Just like Quackity helped him.

“Yeah. That’s us,” Sapnap says, claws picking at his hair. “We’ll figure it out.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Quackity echoes.

They fall asleep in the silent bunker, not saying anything else to each other save for the slow breathing that fills the room as each man succumbs to a calming slumber. Magma cools overnight. The worst of the storm has passed. For now.

**Author's Note:**

> I SWEAR IM WORKING ON THE NEW YESTERDAY’S GONE CHAPTER I REALLY AM SCHOOL’S JUST BEEN KICKING MY ASS LATELY AND I’M TIRED!
> 
> i like writing these lil headcanon oneshots tho!! maybe i’ll make a series and write more dumb shit based on the smp plot and my takes on it. thanks for reading!!!


End file.
